She almost ran away from the nurse and into the shower where bio-mechanic appliances showered and groomed her. Back again in her room, she selected a long white cotton lace dress and slipped it on, under the approving eyes of the nurse.
Breakfast was an ordeal gone through, as was the weighing and the clinical procedures of which these homes made a fetish.
But then she was in the garden, threading her pink floss through the silk, working still on the same almond blossom she’d started more than a month ago.
He came before she could complete three stitches.
She stood up, let go of the embroidery frame, turned to meet him, to be enveloped in his powerful arms, his strong body. His lips came down to cover her own and stifled her little cry of excitement and pleasure.
The nurses said she was better. She should hope so. She hadn’t felt so alive, so vibrant since those days in her home world, those days she couldn’t fully remember. After her honeymoon. Just as she and her new husband had settled in their home, started their life together.
She shook her head and turned her mind and body to her friend, her lover.
Later, after they’d made love, while their passion-warmed nude bodies lay side by side on the carefully groomed grass, he spun his dreams to her.
One day, he said, they’d both be released. They’d marry and have their home in some pleasant world. Perhaps they’d have children.
“Released?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, grey eyes laughing quietly. “Surely. My nurse says I’m improving. And I hear so are you….”
“How do you hear of me?” she asked, because she’d never heard his name and had assumed that since they let him out to another garden, he must be in the west wing, under different supervisors, in a separate meal and recreation group.
“I have my ways.” He smiled, a beguiling smile that lit up his perhaps-too-delicate features.
She had to be contented with that, happy to let him have his secret, if it pleased him so.
But from that day on, and through another week of passionate meetings in the garden, she thought about being released. She thought about it day and night. She’d never before heard that it could happen, that the gates to the rest home could open to lead anywhere but to another rest home. Maybe it was because her mental health had remained fragile for so long. Now, she thought about it, about the many worlds out there, about their pleasures opening to her again. The canals of Tiddar, the flower domes of Minnus. She remembered them from her honeymoon. She thought of sharing them with Ryv. She saw them strolling together everywhere through New Paris, visiting the hallowed precincts of old Earth. In her dreams they strolled together the ageless ruins of Rome, the carefully preserved remnants of twenty-first century London.
Ryv must be wealthy. Very few humans were less than well to do, and none of those in these homes were less than fabulously rich. She thought their honeymoon would surpass her first, clouded marriage.
A week later, at her vanity table, she sat while the tentacles of the bio-mechanic groomer on the table top administered a facial. She inspected her smooth features. She’d been eighteen when they’d first sent her away to a rest home. Her twenty-eight-year-old features might be somewhat sharper, the outlines harder. But she retained her beautiful cheekbones, her straight nose. She’d still be an impressive wife to display at embassy parties in other worlds, for the admiration of natives. And perhaps she could resume the study of native languages that she’d started just before
She tried to reach for it. The memory squirmed and twisted away from her touch, writhed and crawled on dark nebulous tentacles, away from her rational mind.
Nothing left but a shiver down her back, and a feeling as of something cold and clammy that had dragged up the back of her neck.
She gave her blonde hair a last tug, looked at the flawless make-up applied by the groomer, turned the groomer off, hurried down the broad stairs to the garden.
However, all that day she waited in vain. She finished the almond blossom and several others, started on the brown of the embroidered tree trunk. She looked up at any small sound, always distracted, always waiting. Where could Ryv be?
She told herself that he must have been detained, somehow. Perhaps he had a visitor. She remembered a visit from her own parents, almost a year ago.
They couldn’t visit more often, of course. Her father was an experienced ambassador, that being the polite term for the men who administered alien worlds and wrung from them their wealth for the benefit of Earth. Of course, they also brought the natives culture, civilization and science, so that was all right.
And her mother’s duties as a linguist and a hostess kept her fully occupied. Even when Kratrina had lived in their home, she hadn’t seen them more than twice a month. Not that she’d missed them. They’d made sure she was surrounded by a bevy of alien nurses and nannies, friends and teachers.
The wind started up at three, as always, but Ryv didn’t come. She wondered if he was well, and for a frightening moment her throat tightened. She thought that perhaps he had been released before her, perhaps he had already forgotten her, perhaps
The cold shiver traveled up her back.
At nightfall, she folded her embroidery frame, went inside.
That night, she tossed and turned, unable to sleep in her comfortable, temperature controlled bed. When she fell asleep, close to dawn, she dreamed she was a child in her parents’ home. She’d been left alone by the nannies and had gone in search of her mom. But, no matter how many doors she opened and how many rooms she searched, all she found was a likeness of Ryv, hastily drawn on the walls of a hall through which a red wind blew.
“Your emotional readings are up a little, dear,” the nurse said, staring at a screen. “Anything wrong? Any… memories?”
Kratrina shook her head, hurried to the fresher.
Emerging groomed, she chose a figure-molding red dress. Today Ryv would come. She thought how he would appreciate the dress, the joy he would take in undressing her. She thought of his muscular body, his perfect, flawless features and, clutching her embroidery frame, she danced her way to the garden.
That day she finished the tree trunk and started on the other shadowy trunks behind it.
That night she cried into her soft pillow and dreamed of something cold and dark, something whose touch left you slimed.
“We should, perhaps, give you some relaxants?” the nurse asked the next morning.
But Kratrina forced a smile on her tired features and told the nurse that it was nothing. Just something having to do with her cycle, something mysterious and female and human.
If they gave her medication, she would have to stay inside. And then she wouldn’t see Ryv. There would be no chance of seeing Ryv.
Kratrina sat up with a cry, as the lights in her room came on full force.
Her dream fled from the bright illumination. She’d dreamed of Ryv, but not Ryv. A Ryv that was something cold and dark, something alien that slithered upon its belly and left yellow slime in its trail. Something that came to you in the dark of night and—AndShe grasped for it, but couldn’t find what scared her so. She shook her head.
She was letting herself feel this dream too much. After all, Ryv had only been absent for a week. Perhaps someone had caught him trying to walk between the gardens and he’d lost his outdoor privileges. Perhaps he had got worse and was being medicated. Perhaps he was trying to be good, attempting to defray attention from his activities, so he could continue seeing her.
Her pulse slowed. The fine sweat that covered her body dried, in a shiver of coolness.
Her link crackled. The hologram of the nurse’s face floated above it, “Lady Cryssa? Is anything wrong? Do you wish me to schedule an appointment with a doctor?”